


lemons (when life gives you them)

by MathConcepts



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Book is starting to become self-aware of his shit, Booker is rolling WITH IT, Booker's caffeine problem, Copley wondering just what the FUCK he is doing with his life, Established Relationship, Gen, M/M, NOTHING explicit in the slightest, Quynh being the older sister, References to PTSD, Sexual Humor, TW for speculation on Merrick's sex life, but there's some introspection mixed in, everyone being bros, explicit descriptions of coffee orders, mentions/references to csa, not as angsty as it could be, quynh is a little shit, references to Copley's history
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:15:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26052526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MathConcepts/pseuds/MathConcepts
Summary: Copley has a lemon tree in his backyard. This should not be a relevant as it is to Booker.
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Quynh | Noriko, Booker | Sebastien le Livre/James Copley
Comments: 19
Kudos: 90





	lemons (when life gives you them)

**Author's Note:**

> Let's try a lighter note for a Booker-centric fic! Not too much lighter, but a tad lighter. Like three shades or so.

They're crammed round the desk in Copley's dim office, bent over a map - paper map, computer screens bother Quynh's eyes, or so she says. Disposable coffee cups dot the desk, they'd done carryout, because a mission of this nature was much too sensitive to discuss in public, for many reasons. Even if Copley does have their favored cafe wired to such an extreme that the camera and microphone lines are probably one with the structural integrity of the building by now.   
  
Honestly, he could give _Andy_ a run for paranoia.   
  
White chocolate mocha, extra whip, five extra espresso shots for him. Black mint tea for Quynh, crushed ice, garnished with orange rind. She drinks exclusively some variation of tea, but will get a flat white on rare occasions. For Copley, decaf coffee, a touch of sugar, and he squeezes his own lemons into it. And his own lemons mean his _own lemons_ , there's a tree of tender years kept in the backyard in a huge huge planter and painstakingly cultivated.   
  
"My wife meant to start a garden of sorts. I know the climate here is not exactly right for it, but how could I say no? Everything else died when she.... well... this one was the only one to catch." is the explanation Copley gives when Booker finds him picking the lemons one day.  
  
Well, Booker went easy on the lemons after that. Copley, unaware of his turmoil, keeps on using the lemons up to this very day. Very minute to be exact.   
  
The lemon juice drips a pale sickly yellow from the shell of the fruit Copley is juicing into his cup, he's doing it precisely and without looking, just to further illustrate the healthy choices of his drink versus everyone else's. Or more than likely, just Booker's.   
  
Booker can't care less. If Copley wants be some sort of utilitarian vegan do-gooder that's solely his business, but Booker is going to remain tits deep in actual caffeinated coffee, thank you very much. Quynh thinks they act like children over this coffee thing. Quynh is right.   
  
Quynh is right about mostly everything, from fashion - _those pants do not go with those glasses, change at once_ \- to the weather - _there's condensation on the bag of rolls, it's going to rain_ \- to the more serious matters - _planting a knife in the chest of the man that was supposed to be their contact for a mission after sensing a double-cross from just the fucking cadence of his voice_ \-   
  
They've learned, and learned quickly to take to heart every word she says, no matter how trivial. The woman is profoundly wise, six thousand years on this earth, give or take a thousand, will _make_ one wise, and she carries herself with all the gravity of it.   
  
There's also the five hundred years of forced meditation at the bottom of the ocean she carries around too, but that's a matter for another time. 

Quynh ponders the map, chewing on a bit of orange rind in the same manner a contented farmer might chew a piece of straw. "Here." she says, tapping a spot on it with a perfectly manicured and polished fingernail. Maroon nail polish, not dark red. She's very specific about the difference. Copley sips his coffee, purses his lips."

"Two miles northeast." he counters. Quynh dips away for drink of her tea, comes back talking around a mouthful of ice.  
  
"One."  
  
Copley pauses, considers, then looks to Booker, who shrugs, and takes the path of neutrality. Openly siding with either of them will only lead to regrets for him. They've been carrying on this argument for days, Copley and Quynh, with no resolution besides the determination from either of them to win it. 

"We could just bypass all that -" he waves at the map - "and come in from the back."   
  
Quynh scoffs, not impressed, and darts a pointed glance between him and Copley. "Haven't you been doing enough _coming in_ from the back?" and Copley chokes, expelling coffee across the map.  
  
"One of us can come in from the front, and another from the back, then." Booker goes on without missing a beat. Along with expensive shopping habits, weekly manicures and a taste for weakening the socioeconomic status quo via the targeted assassination of pedophilic businessmen, Quynh has also picked up the habit of dropping tasteful innuendo into everyday conversations.  
  
Booker's innuendos? Not so tasteful, but he tries. Quynh throws him a half-grin, showing that she appreciates his efforts, and her hair brushes over what's a bustling metropolis in real life as she leans over the map for a closer look, unaffected by the droplets scattered on it. Copley recovers enough to set his cup away and come to a decision.  
  
"One of you can enter from either point," he says, deliberately choosing his words, as to not invoke anymore raunchy jokes from either party. "You'll be able to sweep from back to front, it'll give you extra security." Quynh waves her hand, so-so, giving him the victory of the hour. They have two days before the actual job, so she has plenty of time to argue her side some more.   
  
  
  
They in fact do _not_ have two days before the job. (And there's life with those fucking lemons.) The job gets jumpstarted when Copley's recognizance informs them that their target is making plans to meet with his current victim, and when Quynh informs them in a torrent of furious Vietnamese interlaced with English, that they are, and Booker quotes - _going to shove the target's dick up his own ass and toss him back into hell_ \- which would be an extremely inventive turn of phrase, if Booker didn't know for a fact that Quynh was quite capable, and most likely intending to do, word-for-word, just that.   
  
Which would in turn be absolute fucking hell for Copley to cover up. Which in turn, doesn't fucking matter, because they are, at this very moment, being driven downtown by Copley to murder a corporate asshole sex offender in his own office. Which, _hell fucking yeah_ is his first thought. The second is that there are Very Bad connotations attached to this corporate asshole thing for him.  
  
No, he's not getting flashbacks to the shitshow with Merrick. Or maybe he is. It's nobody's goddamned business but his own. Although Merrick, the weasely little fuck that he was, was not a child molester, even if Booker is willing to bet his - first edition, annotated and signed, a gift from Nicky - copy of a Midsummer's Night Dream that Merrick was hiding a penchant for some very extreme kinks. See, there's a reason why Merrick hired someone like Keane, and it wasn't just because the late man was an exceptional mercenary.   
  
Aaaaaand now he wants a drink. Which he isn't going to get, because one: they are on a job, and two: Quynh has told him in high detail just what she will do to him if she ever, ever catches him drinking with reckless abandon again. Hearing it was bad enough. He doesn't want to experience it.  
  
"But can I have a drink...or two sometime? Just casually?" he had asked with the desperation of a man who had just been abducted, chained and fucking _dumped_ onto the wagon by a petite, and very, very scary woman.

"We'll see." she had said speculatively, testing the edge of a blade against her thumb.  
  
Yeah, she had threatened to skin him alive. Was she probably bluffing? The answer is probably yes. Has he touched an unauthorized drop since? Hell fucking no. He isn't fucking stupid, despite strong evidence to the contrary.  
  
  
  
  
But, the most pressing question is: does he keep his shit together for long enough to carry out the mission? Yes he does. And he even keeps Quynh from maiming the body too much, for PR purposes. Copley appreciates when things go cleanly. So does Booker, because that means he gets to sleep in the bed.  
  
They go out to eat to celebrate the next day at a restaurant that specializes in Vietnamese food, Quynh is always complaining that nothing tastes like it used to, and this place is their compromise. Copely has an aqueous martini with his _pho_ , which first off, _what the fuck,_ how can a martini be aqueous without being an affront to God himself? Quynh tells him to shut up, sips her steaming tea and declares her _cao lau_ palatable. Booker has _bun bo nam bo_ , orders a lemonade with it, and doesn't realize this breaks his self-inflicted fast from lemons.  
  
He's feeling good enough about himself to shrug it off when he does realize. Everyone has their way of dealing with things, his method is to step back, to distance himself until a manageable level can be reached. Problem is, this method had kept him distanced from, but fucking _enabling_ his problems for nearly two hundred years, and ended with him getting booted out on his ass. Perhaps it's time he starts facing things head-on. So he drinks the lemonade, gropes Copley under the table - making him choke on his noodles, and in turn making Quynh threaten them with all manner of indignities.  
  
  
"You should plant an orange tree." he mumbles to Copley, when they're back at the house, in bed, and they're tacky and warm and vaguely damp. Quynh is partial to orange zest in many things, and Copley freshly-squeezed orange juice. It's a win-win.  
  
" _Mmmphf_." Copley says, and elbows him to make him move off the covers. Well, he'll bring it up in the morning then, after Quynh takes her piece out of them for having loud sex. It interrupts her concentration when she's painting, she says.  
  
She says a lot of things. He doesn't want her to ever stop. Between her, the man in bed beside him, and the other man who they left a bloody pulp on his own office floor yesterday - well, not the man himself, but the motivation behind the action of making him into a bloody pulp - life is gaining some charm back.  
  
Maybe tomorrow he'll even help Copley pick some of those lemons.  
  



End file.
